In another instance of misinformation regarding the novel coronavirus or COVID-19, an image of a page from an Uttar Pradesh higher secondary board textbook is being circulated with the claim that the infections caused by Coronavirus can be cured by medicines like aspirin, antihistamine, nasal spray, etc
The book titled Modern Zoology or Adhunik Jantu Vigyan is UP board’s curriculum for Class 12 students since 2001.
Several people on Twitter have cited the book and claimed that the infection is not a recent disease.
‘#WHO you have not gone through the book of 12th standard written by Dr Ramesh Chand Gupta where he has mentioned about coronavirus so this is not a recent disease and he mentioned the cure too…who else is confused here,’ a Twitter user wrote.
#WHO you have not gone through the book of 12th standard written by Dr Ramesh Chand Gupta where he has mentioned about coronavirus so this is not a recent disease and he mentioned the cure too…who else is confused here #JantaCurfewMarch22 #pmoindia #NarendraModi#coronavirus pic.twitter.com/WWA8HzuskX
â Sunita Pradhan (@SunitaP22163768) March 22, 2020
As per Intermediate book of Jantu-science, written by Dr. Ramesh Gupta. Mentioned the medicine of #CoronaVirus on page 1072. We can help effective people by this. Doctors are requested to analysis the medicine and advise. Medicines are Aspirin, anti-histamines & Nasal spray. pic.twitter.com/kBhjG444kf
â kapil khatter (@102_khatter) March 22, 2020
The claim is also being propagated on WhatsApp.
‘Brothers, after finding it in many books, the drug of novel coronavirus has been found with great difficulty, we have not been able to find the coronavirus medicine but where the coronavirus medicine was found, But, the drug of coronavirus is given in the Intermediate Animal Science book, the scientist who has written about this disease has also written about its treatment and it is not a new disease. (Translated to English),’ reads the viral WhatsApp forward.
One of our community members asked us to verify the claim on our fact check number.
The ‘Common Cold’ section of the book mentions coronavirus. According to the book, there are several types of common cold, of which 75% can be attributed to Coronaviruses and Rhinoviruses. In the treatment portion of this section, substances like aspirin, antihistamines and nasal spray are mentioned.
Claim:
There are three claims made in the textbook
(1) COVID-19 is not a new disease.
(2) The cure for COVID-19 was found long ago.
(3) COVID-19 can be cured with aspirin, antihistamines and nasal spray.
Fact Check:
New Disease
According to WHO, COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. The virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
‘This #coronavirus is not SARS, it’s not MERS & it’s not influenza. It is a unique virus with unique characteristics.Both #COVID19 & influenza cause respiratory disease & spread the same way, via small droplets of fluid from the nose & mouth of someone who is sick’-@DrTedros
â World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 3, 2020
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses which may cause illness in animals or humans. In humans, several coronaviruses are known to cause respiratory infections ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The most recently discovered coronavirus causes coronavirus disease COVID-19.
Confirmed Cases of COVID-19 were first reported in late 2019, when a mysterious illness was reported in Wuhan, China. The cause of the disease was soon identified as a new kind of coronavirus, and the infection has since spread to many countries around the world and become a pandemic.
On 11 February the World Health Organization announced that the official name of the disease this new coronavirus caused would be COVID-19, a shortened version of COronaVIrus Disease 2019.
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses calls the virus ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome COronaVirus 2’, or SARS-CoV-2 because it is related to the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003.
According to Frank Esper, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic, the older human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s, but have likely circulated in humans for centuries. These include 229E (alpha coronavirus), NL63 (alpha coronavirus), OC43 (beta coronavirus) and HKU1 (beta coronavirus).
Dr Esper refers to the newer coronaviruses as ‘true emerging infectious diseases.’ These include SARS-CoV (SARS), MERS-CoV (MERS) and, of course, SARS-Cov-2.
‘These are strains that have undergone recent animal-to-human transition,’ he explained. This can happen when a virus either mutates directly to humans or through a second (intermediary) species that then further mutates into a human pathogen.
‘This is what we saw with SARS in 2002-2003…
